Friday, May 31, 2013

Expedia: Find Your Story allows anyone to create an interactive visualisation of their favourite journey that they can then share with their friends on Facebook.

The application asks you the destination of your journey. You can then add photos from your trip and also choose the music that you want to play on your interactive journey visualisation.

The finished visualisation presents an animated Google Map showing your journey, which then segues into a Street View animation of your destination. After the animation reaches your destination it presents a slideshow of your uploaded photos, during which you can listen to your chosen music.

The finished visualisation is really polished and a lot more effective than I've made it sound above.

Over the last few weeks we have heard a lot about the future of Google Maps. As of today we can now actually view the future on Google Maps.

After Earth Decay is a Google Map that allows you to observe how the world will look one thousand years after humans have left the planet. Using a time-line slider tool you can view satellite images of the Earth over the next thousand years and observe continental drift in action as South America crashes into Africa.

In Street View mode you can view future images of famous locations around the world and witness the collapse of the Eiffel Tower and the erosion of the White House and other globally important buildings and monuments.

After Earth is of course a promotional website for M. Night Shyamalan's film of the same name and the events depicted on this map are entirely dependent on Will Smith's ability to accurately predict the future.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Isitunsunshine is a Google Maps based worldwide weather forecasting application.

The application includes a very handy time-line slider tool that allows the user to quickly view the weather forecast for the next few days. Just slide the tool to the day which you wish to see a forecast for and the map instantly updates to display the weather for that day.

Users can switch between temperature, wind, precipitation and other forecast views. The time-slider tool includes a useful chart view which also instantly displays a graph of the chosen forecast over the next few days.

Walk Score has unveiled new neighborhood pages that provide a wealth of local data, not just about how walkable an area is, but how good the local transit is, how great an area is for cycling and how good it is for eating and drinking out.

Each Neighborhood Page includes a number of useful Google Maps. These include isochrone maps (showing how far you can travel on public transit for different periods of time), eating out heat maps (to show you the concentration of cafes, bars and restaurants) and biking heat maps (displaying area bike scores).

Online City Maps is a mapping platform that helps local government combine GIS and Google Maps to create great maps that provide important local information. Using the platform local government can easily create maps that combine local zoning and transportation issues with other data important to local residents such as garbage pick-up days and the locations of schools and city offices.

The Online City Maps homepage includes a gallery of some Google Maps applications that have been built by local authorities using the platform. At the bottom of the homepage you can also find links to Google Maps that provide guides to a number of worldwide cities, including New York, Paris and London. These mapped guides provide useful local information, such as the locations of museums, restaurants and hotels.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Global News has created a Google Map showing 37 years of Oils Spoils in Alberta. Alberta has had an incredible average of two crude oil spills a day, every day for the past 37 years.

The Global News Google Map provides information on every spill of crude oil, crude bitumen and synthetic crude since 1975. The map uses markers whose size reflect the volume of crude spilled at each location. If you click on a marker you can view details about all the spills at that location (many locations have had more than one spill).

The University of North Carolina has a great collection of historic maps. Selected maps from the collection can be viewed on-line overlaid on top of Google Maps.

The Historic Overlay Maps project includes the Compleat Map of North-Carolina from 1770, the First Actual Survey of North Carolina from 1808 and an 1884 Map of the Cherokee Nation. The collection also includes many historic North Carolina county maps.

Back in January Google began collecting new Street View imagery in Staten Island, the Rockaways and other areas in New York that were affected by Hurricane Sandy. The new imagery has now gone live on Google Maps.

It is fair to say that Google's move to update the Street View imagery in these areas was not met entirely positively by all local residents. In January some residents expressed concerns that the new imagery would affect property prices in the area. However many residents welcomed the move and hoped it raise awareness of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

CLAVIN (Cartographic Location And Vicinity INdexer) is an open source software package for geotagging and geoparsing text. The tool combines a variety of open source tools to geocode natural language, extracting location names from unstructured text documents.

CLAVIN does not simply 'look up' location names mentioned in a piece of text but "uses intelligent heuristics in an attempt to identify precisely which "Springfield" (for example) was intended by the author, based on the context of the document."

You can try out CLAVIN for yourself by cutting and pasting or typing your own text into the Online Demo. The demo gives you the option to parse the document and return a list of all the locations mentioned in the text or to view all the locations on a Google Map.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The locations are based on a list drawn up by Neighborhood Scout which was compiled from FBI crime data from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in America. Nieghborhood Scout say that the chosen neighborhoods are those with the highest predicted rates of violent crime per 1,000 residents.

The Google Street View World tour is a slideshow of Google Maps Street View images captured in the 25 neighborhoods. It would be interesting to compare this list of dangerous neighborhoods with a deprivation index. The Street View images would suggest that these neighborhoods would also feature highly on any list of the most deprived areas.

Clean Cruising has released a live Google Map showing the locations of Princess Cruises ships.

The Clean Cruising map shows the simulated real-time position of Princess Cruises ships based on a number of factors. These include the latest transponder information, the cruise schedules and live webcam images.

If you select a cruise ship's marker on the map you can view the ship's current position, the last port of call and the next port. Many of the information windows also include the latest webcam image from the ship.

In 2011 Norwegian Public Service broadcaster NRK live broadcasted the voyage of the cruise liner Hurtigruten around the Norway coastline for 134 hours. During the live broadcast you could view a live map showing the position of the Hurtigruten alongside the live television stream of the cruise.

You can still visit the site and replay the whole 134 hours! So if you think that you will never be able to afford a cruise, or, if you have never visited the Norwegian fjords, you can at least take a virtual cruise via NRK's Google Map.

GeoGuessr has quickly become the most popular Google Maps geography game. It has now become even better with GeoSettr!

In this geography game you are shown a random Street View and must try and guess where in the world the Street View was taken. With the release of GeoSettr you can now create your own GeoGuessr game based on your favorite locations and Street Views.

Using GeoSettr you can create your own GeoGusser game of five questions. All you have to do is choose five locations on a Google Map and then you then get a unique link to your game that you can share with your friends.

The mapping of the world's start-up companies continues apace. Mapped in Israel is a new Google Maps application connecting and promoting the tech community in Israel.

The map shows the locations of Israel's start-up's, accelerators, investors and co-working spaces. Users can refine the categories of company displayed on the map using the side panel. It is also possible to click on the markers on the map to view details about each company and to view each company's website address.

Monday, May 27, 2013

I've seen a few Google Maps apps over the year that allow you to click on a map and get the current time at that location. Timezone Picker, however, is the first one I've seen that shows you all the countries in each time-zone.

The code for TimeZone Picker is available on GitHub, alongside links to two demo maps. One demo uses the Google Maps API and the other uses OpenLayers. On both maps if you click on a country you can view the current time at that location and a shape file of the whole time-zone.

If you search for bike directions in Google Maps you will be shown a route that avoids busy streets and uses suitable bike paths. Time estimates for bike routes on Google Maps are based on a complex set of variables accounting for the type of road, terrain and turns over the course of the route.

In the UK Sustrans has created a handy mapped guide to cycling routes. The Sustrans Cycling Map shows traffic free cycling paths and on-road cycling routes.

Cyclodeo uses Google Maps and videos of a cycling route to allow the user to
view the route in a YouTube video. The videos are synced to the Google
Map of the route so that the user can click anywhere on the route and view
the video at that location.

As well as providing video bike routes in Amsterdam Cyclodeo has coverage in Copenhagen, New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona.

I've always found Google Maps satellite imagery guessing games far too difficult. In these games you are given a close-up shot of a few trees or a nondescript field, which really could be taken almost anywhere in the world, and then you asked to identify where it is. Most of these games are almost impossible!

Map Race however is different. I found that if you select the World Cities mode then you have a really good chance of getting the answer right. In this mode you are shown an aerial view of a random city and you then have to guess the correct location from four different cities.

Given the style of architecture, the street patterns and the other visual clues that are apparent in the aerial image I've found that you can normally make a very guess of the city's location. In fact I'm rather good at this game, even when I have never visited the portrayed city.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

A team of four drivers has embarked on a four day journey to cross Canada from the Pacific coast to Newfoundland. The Longest Drive team set off today and you can follow their progress on a live real-time Google Map.

The team are using Spot to track their journey. The live map updates every 10 to 30 minutes to show the latest recorded location of the car. At the time of writing the team has already passed Calgary and seem on target to reach Newfoundland within their four day target.

Sometimes the best maps don't have to be particularly innovative to be powerful and effective. This map marking the victims of the Nazi Holocaust is certainly powerfully evocative.

Since 1997 German artist Gunter Demnig has been creating memorials for
individual victims of the Holocaust. Demnig's stolpersteine (stumbling
blocks) are small, cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of
Nazism.
Each stolperstein is placed in the sidewalk outside a victim's home.

Stolpersteine Online
is a Google Map of the memorials that have been erected. The project
has created about 35,000 stumbling blocks so far. This is a very small
percentage of the total number of victims of the Holocaust, however if
you zoom in on any German city on this map you still can't fail to be
overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Nazis Holocaust.

Another powerful use of the Google Maps API this week was produced by The New York Times. The Times created two custom Street View images
of the devastation caused by the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma - Before and After: 360° Views From Moore.

The custom Street Views were captured on Tuesday and have been synced
with the Google Maps Street Views that were captured in December 2007.
If you pan either Street View both the before and after image moves so
you can compare the images around the whole 360 degrees.

This week I was also impressed by Vasile Cotovanu's polygon masking effect wizard. An app that can quickly create the GeoJSON, KML, or
Google Maps API polygon code needed to create your own polygon mask.

Geomask
allows you to simply draw around an area on Google Maps and just press a
button to generate the polygon to create this neat masking effect. You
aren't restricted to one polygon mask and you can highlight as many areas
as you want on the map.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Google's 'Hello World' introductory website for the new look Google Maps not only lets you apply for an invitation to the new look map but includes a lot of other interesting information.

The site includes a 'Tips and Tricks' section which includes some interesting advice on features you might not be aware of in Google Maps. It also includes a great infographic exploring the history behind Google Maps.

In a A Brief History of Google Maps Pegman walks you through a timeline of some of the important developments in the history of Google's online map service. As you scroll down the page Pegman walks along a highway on the map showing you when features such as live traffic, Street View and indoor maps were added to Google Maps.

An old Google Maps Mania favourite Where's the Path? is now out in a new version that has been optimised for use on tablets and smartphones.

Where's the Path allows users to compare the UK's Ordnance Survey maps alongside Google Maps or Open Street Map. The two maps are synchronised, so if you pan one map the other map pans to show the same view.

The application is a very useful resource, particularly for hikers. The Ordnance Survey map has far greater detail than Google Maps about public footpaths and other off-road features. Google Maps on the other hand allows you to view satellite imagery alongside the OS map.

Ans, for those of you obsessed about whether Google Maps or Open Street Map has better map data, Where's the Path allows you to compare the two maps side-by-side to your heart's content.

Amnesty International in New Zealand has developed an app that analyses your Facebook timeline for possible crimes under international law.

If you connect Trial by Timeline to your Facebook account you can view a map of all the locations in the world where you could face imprisonment for your behaviour. I must remember not to post drunken messages to my Facebook wall if I'm ever in Kuwait.

It should be a crime under international law to listen to Bob Dylan. However Slate has decided to mark Bob Dylan's 72nd birthday with a map of every street, town, and city Dylan has ever sung about.

If you click on a song's marker on the Bob Dylan Map you can then click through to read the lyrics of the song or listen to it on Spotify. I was kidding by the way, I love Bob Dylan's music.

One map kept cropping up in my never ending search for maps this week. The CSS Tube Map recreates Harry Beck's famous London Underground map using nothing but HTML5, CSS3 and a tiny bit of jQuery. It uses no images.

The map was created by John Galantini, who you may know from his CSS Tardis.

Friday, May 24, 2013

The Atlas of Public Stocks is a searchable Google Map of publicly listed companies around the world. The map allows users to locate public companies within definable distances from a given address.

If you select a marker on the map you can view detailed information about the company, including the postal and website address. The details include which sector the company is in. Probably the only thing missing on this map is the ability to filter the companies by the sector. It would be nice to be able to search the map by sector as well as by distance.

The data is there so it should be a simple task to add that option to the map.

GeoGuessr has rightly been getting a lot of great coverage lately. It has now even been featured in an xkcd strip.

Google Maps has featured a number of times over the years on xkcd. I think however this is the first time that a specific application using the Google Maps API has starred on its own.

Fame indeed!

Just in case you still haven't played GeoGuessr:

The game drops you into a random Street View and then asks you to guess where in the world you are. Points are awarded for how close your guess is to the actual location.

Four Seasons in One View

Daniel Shwarz has been scanning Google Maps aerial imagery in search of locations where images taken at different times of the year have been stitched together. His post, 'Justapose', includes screenshots of a number of examples. I think the images are rather beautiful.

Street View Rock Video

It has been a while since we last featured a music video created with Google Maps Street View. Here's one from band Tereza.

It is worth watching beyond the initial timelapse sequence. Later in the video the band member's heads have been superimposed over the blurred out heads of people in the Street View images.

HouseinCity is a Google Maps based real-estate engine for a number of Indian cities.

HouseinCity allows house hunters to search for a property by location, price, the number of bedrooms and by the property's builder. In what I think is a first for Indian real-estate websites, HouseinCity also offers users the option to search by commuting time.

The map includes two commuting time options. 'Metro Connectivity' overlays a heat map of metro travel times on the map. The heat map shows the average commuting time for a morning commute on the metro. Alternatively, for the driving times of a commute in morning traffic, users can use the 'Project Connectivity' option.

It is also possible to display local amenities, like schools, shopping malls etc. on the map. If you select any of the local amenities on the map you can instantly view the travel time that it will take to reach the amenity from your selected location.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

gsalr.com is a garage sale, yard sale and estate sale listing service with a handy Google Maps interface and trip planner that can help you plan your weekend garage
sale trips.

If you select a sale's marker on the map you can view details of the sale and click on the 'add to trip planner' button to add the sale to your personal trip planner. After you have selected all the sales that you plan to visit you can then click on the 'View Route and Directions' button in the side panel to open another map with a planned route and the directions to all your planned sales.

NPR has released a map showing aerial imagery of the damage from the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma. Zoom In On Oklahoma Tornado Damage displays imagery collected on May 20th.

The map includes a tool to view building footprints, the tool can be turned on and off by clicking on the 'Hide Labels' button.

This Open Street Map map of aerial imagery also shows the devastating damage caused by the tornado in Moore.

Unfortunately the map doesn't have any zoom controls or an option to view aerial imagery of the same location before the tornado struck. The map, however, does include a dynamic URL that gives the latitude and longitude of the current view. Therefore, if you want to compare before and after views of the tornado, you can grab the latitude and longitude of a view and paste it into Google Maps.

The aerial view above shows Plaza Towers Elementary School. Below is the aerial view of the same school on Google Maps, taken before the tornado.

Update:Google Crisis Map now also has the same post-tornado imagery. The Google Crisis Map also includes aerial imagery taken at the end of April, so users can compare the pre and post-tornado imagery on the same map.

Since 1997 German artist Gunter Demnig has been creating memorials for individual victims of the Holocaust. Demnig's stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) are small, cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of Nazism.

Each stolperstein is placed in the sidewalk outside the victim's home. Stolpersteine Online is a Google Map of the memorials that have been erected. The project has created about 35,000 stumbling blocks so far. This is a very small percentage of the total number of victims of the Holocaust, however if you zoom in on any German city on this map you still can't fail to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Nazis Holocaust.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Street View Quiz is a series of quiz questions based on Google Maps Street View.

In each quiz question you are presented with a Street View and then have to answer a question related to the view presented. The questions might ask you to name something seen in the Street View or you could get a more general question about something that happened at the location.

Street View Quiz includes a simple interface that allows users to create their own questions by providing a link to a Street View and submitting the question and answer.

GeoGuessr
is a Street View geography quiz that sets you the challenge of guessing
the locations of a series of random Street View images. Using visual
clues, such as the fauna, landscape and street furniture you have to
place a pin on a global Google Map indicating where you think each
Street View image was taken.

The closer your guess to the actual location then the more points you win.

Locatestreet
is a very similar game that presents a series of random Street Views
and the player has to guess the country where the image was captured.

The featured terrain, architecture, street furniture and modes of transport
all provide clues that can help the player guess the country of origin
of the random Street View image. The game also includes three clues for
each image, but be warned - if you use a clue you will win less points.

The custom Street Views were captured on Tuesday and have been synced with the Google Maps Street Views that were captured in December 2007. If you pan either Street View both the before and after image moves so you can compare the images around the whole 360 degrees.

The Times captured two custom Street View images, one at South Avery Drive, between Southeast 4th and 8th Street, and the other at Southeast 4th Street and Heatherwood Drive.

I've long been a fan of Vasile Cotovanu's polygon masking effect that allows you to highlight a particular area on Google Maps. Vasile has now released a wizard app that can quickly create the GeoJSON, KML, or Google Maps API polygon code needed to create your own polygon mask.

Geomask allows you to simply draw around an area on Google Maps and just press a button to generate the polygon to create this neat masking effect. You aren't even restricted to one area and you can highlight as many areas as you want on the map.

The tool is really easy to use. I created a polygon mask to highlight the London Olympic Park and then created a map with the mask in under two minutes using Geomask (you can see the result in the screenshot at the top of the post).

Using a polygon mask is a very effective way to highlight a specific area on a Google Map. Here are a couple of Google Maps applications that have used a similar polygon masking effect to highlight regions on the map.

Der Bayerischer Wald is a great Google Maps guide to hiking routes, accommodation and events in the Bavarian Forest region in Germany.

Ourense en Verde is using the Google Maps API to map the natural beauty of the Ourense region in Galicia, Spain.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Street Food App is a desktop, iOS and Android app for finding food trucks in a number of US and Canadian cities.

Currently the Street Food App can help you find nearby food trucks in Boston, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Columbus and Victoria. Each city includes an option to view the current location of the food trucks on a Google Map.

Each truck is displayed on the map with a green or red map marker, green markers indicate the trucks currently open for businesses and the red markers indicate that they are currently closed. Users can click on each food truck on the map to view a small review and the truck's hours of business.

The Google Art Project is an amazing collection of museums, art galleries and works of art that can all be viewed with Google Maps Street View.

Today Google has added 20 more museums, 1,500 new high-resolution artworks and 16 Gigapixel images to the project. The Gigapixel images include “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. The new museums include the Fondation Beyeler Museum in Switzerland and the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the Greek island of Patmos